Cathie from Canada

"Do not go gentle into that good night.
Blog, blog against the dying of the light"

Monday, December 21, 2015

The Christmas gift anyone can give -- saying "thanks!"

I usually enjoy reading the various advice columnists around the web, and particularly at this time of year, a lot of the columns are about how difficult it is to buy Christmas presents for their ungrateful, greedy relatives and how awful are the gifts they receive in return -- like this one from Captain Awkward #809: Gold, Frankincense, Myrrh, and Judgement and this one from Carolyn Hax I Hate Christmas.
I have come to the conclusion that there is really just one “gift” we can all give to our nearest and dearest this Christmas and it is this: Be visibly pleased and vocally happy with any present that we receive from them; no matter how awful or inappropriate or ill-fitting it is -- just smile and say “how good of you to think of this” or “it's just what I wanted” or “what a clever idea” or even just “thanks so much for thinking of me”.
Even if its one of Dr. Grumpy's giant shrimp pillows: